Help/Advice fixing water features on map I made when I was young?

[Autumnal]

Hello. I'll try to make this as to the point as I can.

This is a map of a fictional country I made when I was young. Since then I've used it for many roleplaying games and such. I've plotted close to 100 cities, given it history, created the cities in sports games, etc. I've grown to love my fictional country.

However, over the years it's been bothering me that my younger self obviously didn't understand where water comes from nor where it goes. Now my goal is to make it a bit more realistic without having to change TOO much by moving major features.

I know that I need to fix the issue that I have rivers that start at the ocean and end at the ocean. I also realize that I have too many rivers flowing in and out of lakes, rivers forking off all over the place and nearly everything is linked together.

My biggest question is in regard to the giant lake in the middle. I have the main river flowing into it and a river flowing out of it. Does that even make sense? Is that plausible?

So, here's a copy of the map that I've jotted down some feature labels and marking some things I'm aware need fixed. And yeah, it's very derivative of North America. Younger me wasn't quite as imaginative I suppose. In terms of size, I suppose it's relatively the same size as North America or a bit smaller.



Overall, the elevation of the land is higher in the north/north east. As for the coloring, the darker green was indicative of thicker forests, but I think part way through I started equating it with higher elevation. so that's a bit...blurry. In it's fictional lore, there IS a lot of rainfall at least.
The red circles are places where I started a river at an ocean. I figured around these parts I can move the start back from the coast a bit and taper them off into tiny tributaries pretty easily.


I figured maybe I could disconnect the central river (H River) from the northern lake (N Lake) and then clean up some of the random forking from N River.
Not sure what to do about the whole mess that is Lake M and the rivers around it. It's supposed to be a waterfall on it's eastern side, but again, I realize that there's just too much stuff connected there.

I think for the most part B River in the west is okay, just disconnect one of the outlets?

Again, the big question is the big central lake, G Lake. Is it plausible? Should I disconnect the H river flowing into it, and wrap it around it's eastern side, and have it link up with F River, flowing out into the western gulf? Should I disconnect both rivers? Then what explanation would I have for a massive lake?

For anyone who reads all of this crap, thank you very much.
For anyone who has advice or suggestions, thank you very, very much.

[waldronate]

It's hard to say much here without a good idea of scale (that is, how big is this map).

One way to work on this would be to add little arrows that show expected flow direction. noting areas required to be navigable would also be a a big help in getting things adjusted. Plotted cities (at least major ones) would also help.

H River somewhat plausible if it's flowing north and crossing the mountains through a significant rift valley. This rift would also account for N Lake and the course of N River: just disconnect the upper reaches of N River from N lake and you're all set. If you want H River to flow from north to south, then you should eliminate the mountain crossing, source H River from N Lake, disconnect N River from N Lake, and it should work well enough. H River on the north side of the mountains would be a separate entity from H River south of the mountains. Plausible if you don't require it to be navigable.

The B river issue is easy to fix: erase one of the outflows and probably add an inflow.

G Lake is plausible if H River is large. What's left would flow out M River.

Lose the upper connector from M Lake to the sea and M river is workable.

The biggest problem on the map is F River. The hydrology suggests strongly that it would more likely be a mountain range than a river. S River would source in those mountains and flow backwards from what is implied by the source circle. M river would flow to the west as the short descent to the ocean. Forcing it across the width of the continent is a difficult proposition.

A lot of that is blind guesswork without much information about elevation areas (just one mountain range) and indicated map size.

[Autumnal]

Wow. Thank you!

All of what you said works and seems like you managed to understand what I was going for.

The elevation, on a tighter, more localized level, has always been vague even to me. Overall, the southwest is the lowest area, the northeast the highest. Northwest fairly high obviously, with the mountains and all.

The area in the southeast, where I had the F River starting, was intended to be a high ground. A cliffs of Dover type look. Which obviously makes the start of F River being the coast even more asinine than it already is.

I was thinking about starting the river a bit in from the coast and a bit more north, and then adjusting the southern border to be a little more straight and less random in it's movement. The river being there is more important than the actual border. Would that make it more workable? Run off from the southeast hills starting the river, the S River adding into it, and ending in the western gulf?

The gap in the mountains needs to stay, but the river doesn't need to run through it. I had always intended it to flow north to south. From what you explained, I can work that out, along with pretty much everything else.

Again, thanks for looking at this vague nonsense and helping me make it less ridiculous. When I get home from work im going to start working on fixing some things and maybe try to figure out some kind of scale.